Vacumn Flowers

Rebel shook her head and began dressing. The earth suit consisted of chameleoncloth pants and blouse with multiple fastenings that weren’t easy to figure out. She felt horribly covered up with them on, though they were no worse, she had to admit, than what she’d worn as a treehanger. She do

Then she stooped out the door.

Rebel straightened and saw vast stretches of grey rock under a milky sky. The land went on forever, dwindling impossibly with distance as it rose to a line of mountains as barren as the moon. It was all exposed bedrock,ru

The wind boomed, and she staggered forward. It was as if someone had placed a hand on her back and pushed.

Her hair and cloak streamed out in front of her and, visions of hull punctures and explosive decompression rising within, Rebel cried out in sudden terror, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

Ommed was there and slipped an arm around her waist to hold her steady. “Nothing is wrong. It’s just the wind coming off the sea.”

“Oh,” Rebel said weakly, though the explanation meant nothing to her. She turned to look behind and saw the land cascading down to a slate green ocean specked with white-tipped waves. Clouds curdled with grey rushed upon her from a vague horizon, so fast she could see them move, melting one into another as they came. “My… God, this is… it’s huge!” She felt vertiginous and almost fell.

Everywhere, the air was aprowl, a vast, restless giant with the clouds in its grip, larger than mountains. It was all too huge. “How can you stand it?”

“We are here to abase ourselves,” Ommed said, “and we welcome the humbling immensities of God for that reason.

But you will discover yourself that what at first appears terrifying can become, as you grow to know it, exhilarating.”

Almost breathless with disbelief, Rebel stared across rock and ocean, letting their immensity wash through her.

There was so much of everything here that her head almost ached with it, but… yes, Ommed was right. It was awful, but at the same time rather grand, like the firsthearing of a symphony in a new musical form that is so magnificent it terrifies.

“Your friends are meeting around the far side of Retreat.

Perhaps it is time that you join them.”

“Yes.”

Retreat was a sprawl of stone beehive huts, of varying sizes, built one upon the other in a curving swirl up the slope. It was all of the same grey bedrock that everywhere dominated the land, and the far reaches of the mass faded to near invisibility, like a skirl of smoke against the ground. It was the only artificial structure in sight. From horizon to horizon was no trace of anything that might not have existed there mille

“We call the great mind Earth,” Ommed corrected her gently. “Earth knows us well. We are here at its tolerance.

It observes us. We don’t know why. Perhaps Earth considers us beasts for its study. Perhaps it maintains the Burren as a kind of wildlife preserve. The question is not an important one.”

“It observes you?” Rebel looked around, saw no sign of cameras. Of course Earth might have more subtle devices, extremely small or distant.

“Every seven years Earth takes a tenth of our number to be absorbed into the great mind.”

“And this doesn’t bother you?”

They walked around the upper curve of Retreat. In the smokehouses there, devotees were preparing racks of fish and slices of monoclonal protein from the fermenters.

“We are here to learn the discipline of submission.

Submission to the will of God takes many forms. We practice all of them.” She looked up, and Rebel flinched back from the intensity of her gaze, the knowing intimacy of her smile. “This is the hut. Your people are within.”

“Yeah. Well, it was great of you to show me the way.”

“You do not yet understand the pleasure there can be in the surrender of will.” Ommed touched the nape of Rebel’s neck with a fingertip cold as ice. Rebel’s body involuntarily stiffened, shivering. “If you wish to learn, ask any of the devotees. We are all your slaves.”

“Jesus.” Rebel ducked into the hut.

It was unlit, and at first she thought it was empty. Then somebody moved, and somebody else coughed, and she realized there were seven people crouched against the walls, all in chameleoncloth; and they were all looking at her. Their faces floated in the gloom, and the eyes in them were cruel and alert. They’d all been chopped wolverine.

“This is your librarian,” somebody said. “Protect her.

She carries your survival skills. And if she dies, one of you will have to be programmed down to take her place.”

There was a low growling noise that might have been laughter.

“You have your orders,” the voice continued. “Go!” The wolverines flowed out, sliding by Rebel on either side in perfect silence. Their leader stood, and the silver spheres at the ends of his braids clicked gently. Rebel was pretty sure this was Bors, but with that feral programming burning on his face, she couldn’t be sure. “Librarian, you will stay.”

She sat. The leader leaned closer, face dominated by a mad, joyless smile. She could smell his breath, faintly sweet, as he said, “Get your skills in.”

Rebel snapped open the library, ran a fingertip down its rainbow-coded array of wafers. Deftly she wired herself to the programmer and set the red user wafers ru

There were three: basic research skills, rock ru

Three wafers were the limit; more than that couldn’t be assimilated without losing half the data. She could feel her location in the Burren now, halfway up the western slopes of the enormous limestone formation. That was the map function. She knew its hills and mountains, down to the networks of caves beneath its surface. She knew which skills could be chipped into a berserker program and which could not. (“Librarian!”) She knew how to shift her weight when a rock turned underfoot just as she landed on it. She knew the Burren’s plants and insects, which were good to eat and which were not. She knew where to find water. (“Librarian!”) She knew which three skills an ecosaboteur needed most. The facts shimmered through and about her, leaving her feeling stu

Someone slapped her. It stung. Startled, she focused on the leader and saw the calm, happy afterglow of violence settle on his face and under it—yes, it was Bors, all right.

“Librarian!” he repeated. “Are your programs run yet?”

“Uh… yeah,” she said shakily. She knew how to run now. Her legs trembled with the desire to be off and away.

She heard an ugly bird-sound just outside. A rook.

“Librarian, you are not part of our team, but we will still be relying on your programming. So you’ve got to be tested. I want you to run to the Portal Dolmen. If you get there by sunset, I’ll know your skills have taken hold.”

She knew what sunset was. She knew what the Portal Dolmen was. “But that’s twelve miles away!”